Robert Colvile is a writer and senior comment editor at the Telegraph, who cares more about politics and policy than is probably healthy - for his newest pieces, please see here. He tweets as @rcolvile.

A time-travelling treat

If anyone's still in mourning for 'Life on Mars', and looking for their prime-time time-travel culture-clash fix, I've got a cracking suggestion – and no, it's not 'Goodnight, Sweetheart'.

Gerald Harper as Adam Adamant, Juliet Harmer as Georgina Jones and Jack May as William E

A few weeks ago, my flatmate introduced me to the DVD box set of 'Adam Adamant Lives!'. A short-lived attempt by the BBC to create a rival to 'The Avengers', it starred Gerald Harper as Adam Adamant, an Edwardian adventurer/spy frozen by one of his various nemeses, only to wake up in the Swinging Sixties.

Living in a flat on top of a car park, and without any visible means of support, he takes up where he left off in the evil-fighting department.

What makes the series a particular joy is how utterly formulaic it was (making it perfect for drinking games, incidentally). Each episode starts with Adam discovering that dark deeds are afoot. He investigates, but, chauvinist that he is, forbids his companion, Miss Jones, from coming along. She, undaunted, goes undercover, which involves wearing a vaguely saucy outfit which scandalises the prudish Adam.

He, meanwhile, has been tricked by the bad guy's henchwoman – being Edwardian, he is unable to suspect a woman of villainy – and has been knocked unconscious, cueing a flashback sequence to his original betrayal which the producers obviously wanted to get their money's worth from. He wakes up, stabs a few bad guys with his sword, makes a few quips, saves the day, and stalks off, leaving Miss Jones to flounce after him as the credits roll.

OK, so it's not the greatest piece of television, but it just about works, carried by the intensity Harper brings to the role, and cameos from the terrifying Jack May as a Punch and Judy Man who becomes Adam's butler (and would go on to play Igor in 'Count Duckula', trivia fans). But the reason I'm mentioning it on 'Why of the World' is because of something my flatmate pointed out.

Adam's world seems light years from that of the Sixties – in fact, that's the entire point of the series – but the distance in time is the same as that from us to the Second World War, which still feels remarkably close. What would a squaddie from 1946 make of our own world? Would he be as out of time as an Edwardian in Swinging London?

So I thought I'd use this blog to pose the question: if you had a handy time machine, which periods of, say, 50 years apart would feel most different? If it's from the 1950s until today, what's changed the most? And which of those changes have been for the best, and which for the worst?